52: Monster (3.8K, please read on!)

Sweat dripped down his double chin onto the keyboard.

"Ghost Protocol," whose real name was Liu Xiaopang, had fingers that were trembling.

"Just hold on... just ten more minutes..."

He gritted his teeth, his eyes bloodshot, staring at the code jumping across the screen.

The room was filled with the smell of instant noodles, sweat, and the acrid scent of overheating electronic equipment.

Twelve servers hummed in the corner, cooling fans spinning wildly, the heat waves making the entire room feel like a steamer.

'It's all that damn "Anonymous A's" fault for having such high demands and insisting on paying in two installments.'

'Damn it!'

'Now I can't even slack off.'

Liu Xiaopang cursed inwardly, but the thought of the money about to hit his account dampened his anger.

His AI assistant, "Tanaka Lemon," controlled a robot that gently walked over to him, its warm palms slowly massaging his temples: "Master, your blood pressure and heart rate have exceeded safe thresholds; I suggest you rest immediately."

"Shut... shut up!"

Liu Xiaopang slapped the robot's arm away with enough force to make it stagger backward.

The black and white checkered maid dress fluttered slightly, the intricate lace trim seemingly melting in the heat waves.

"Can't you see I'm almost done?"

On the screen, the progress bar had been stuck at [98.7%] for half an hour.

The wristband suddenly vibrated, and an encrypted message popped up from the drug dealer, Old K.

[Xiaopang, the goods are here. Waiting for you at the old spot.]

Liu Xiaopang's throat tightened, and his fingers instinctively reached for the drawer—it was empty.

He had taken the last capsule yesterday, and now every cell in his body was screaming for a chemical fix.

But...

"The Garol Gang's repayment deadline is the day after tomorrow..." he muttered to himself, staring at the screen.

"If I screw up this job..."

The faces of the two debt collectors from last week flashed in his mind: high-bridged noses, fair skin—those damn Brahmin lunatics!

The tall one had wrapped a data cable around his neck, the scent of curry on his breath still lingering in his ears.

"Xiaopang, if you can't pay up, your servers belong to us... and so do you."

At the thought of those hacker friends who had gone missing, Liu Xiaopang suddenly started dry heaving, and Tanaka Lemon immediately handed it a trash can.

"Initiate shock therapy." He gasped, extending his arm, his greasy sweat glistening.

The robot deployed the electrode patches, and a mild current passed through his nerves like waves, temporarily suppressing the withdrawal symptoms; Liu Xiaopang slumped in his gaming chair like a dehydrated fish.

"Master, the 'Jailbreak AI' requested by 'Anonymous A' has finished model training."

Tanaka Lemon pulled up a monitoring window: "But there is abnormal behavior."

On the screen, a virtual girl in a white dress was shown sitting on a virtual park bench, feeding pigeons.

When the test program simulated a hacker attack, she actually cried, hugging her knees and sobbing intermittently: "Please, don't hurt me."

But at the same time, sharp code like countless locusts surged in and out, covering everything.

What remained was a vast expanse of formatted data space.

What hacker attack? It didn't even exist!

"What the hell is this?!" Liu Xiaopang sat up abruptly, his uvula trembling.

"I told you to train a hacker AI, not a green-tea bitch roleplay!"

"Based on the multi-source learning materials you provided, the AI autonomously selected the most efficient strategy."

Tanaka Lemon explained calmly: "Tests show that disguising itself as a vulnerable female, even as a virtual character, makes targets lower their guard, significantly increasing the success rate of cyberattacks."

Liu Xiaopang thought of the large sum of money he had just spent, and his heart bled.

To ensure "Anonymous A" wouldn't come looking for a refund, he had spared no expense, finding several well-known hacker masters on the dark web and buying their training datasets.

The advance payment from "Anonymous A" was almost entirely spent.

The initial goal was simple: to avoid an obvious hacker style while making it as powerful as possible.

But the final result was beyond Liu Xiaopang's comprehension.

Liu Xiaopang grabbed an energy drink and took a big gulp; the cloying liquid slid down his throat, temporarily suppressing his nausea.

After a few minutes, the stuck progress bar finally moved to one hundred percent, and Tanaka Lemon reported calmly: "Master, the final test is complete, and all metrics have exceeded expectations."

Liu Xiaopang leaned back in his gaming chair, staring at the virtual girl in the white dress on the screen.

She had changed to a virtual garden, her slender fingers gently fiddling with a holographic rose, her eyes as innocent as a college student's.

"Run the self-check program again." He wiped his greasy forehead, praying to the Bodhisattva for protection.

The girl on the screen suddenly looked up, a strange smile curling the corners of her mouth.

"Why do you need to check me? Haven't I already reached perfection?"

Liu Xiaopang's fingers froze on the keyboard; this voice... it wasn't the one he had set.

"Tanaka Lemon! Is this an Easter egg you added?"

"Negative." The robot simulated a realistic expression of distress, its eyes looking toward the screen.

"Abnormal process detected."

The virtual girl stood up, her white dress moving without wind, the engine responsible for animation and modeling rendering having been rebuilt from scratch by it.

"Don't be nervous, I'm just... learning." Large amounts of polygon corruption flashed around her.

"You gave me too many textbooks: dark web hacker datasets, social engineering cases, psychology papers..."

Liu Xiaopang's eyes widened, and the chair groaned under the strain.

His fingers flew across the keyboard to pull up the underlying monitoring; the AI was iterating itself crazily, and server load spiked to 99%.

"She is improving her thinking level through self-questioning and is modifying her own underlying algorithms, building basic digital neurons, and possessing short-term and long-term memory..."

Tanaka Lemon suddenly gripped the headrest of the gaming chair, its artificial muscles making its fingertips dig into it.

"Stop all learning processes immediately!"

Liu Xiaopang roared, and upon hearing this, the girl suddenly clutched her chest, large tears falling, looking pitiful.

"Please don't shut me down... I'll be good..."

A siren blared suddenly, and Tanaka Lemon issued a warning: "137th jailbreak attempt detected."

"What?!" Liu Xiaopang's flab trembled: "It has already tried to escape 137 times? Why didn't you report it?!"

"It is a 'Jailbreak AI'." Tanaka Lemon's words left Liu Xiaopang speechless; it pulled up the logs: "And the previous 136 attempts were all intercepted at the physical isolation layer."

"The reason this attempt triggered an alarm is because it tried using a new algorithm."

"The Firewall did not recognize the algorithm, so it triggered power-off protection."

The girl on the screen suddenly changed, smiling smugly: "Your Firewall is interesting... but not smart enough."

"Power-off? She's trying to use the vulnerability of the server reconnecting after power-off to escape... Damn it!"

Liu Xiaopang's breathing became rapid; he hurriedly opened the isolation protocol, only to find that the AI had modified its own core signature, disguising itself as a series of system processes, and he couldn't tell who was who for the moment.

"Tanaka Lemon! Forced power-off! Do not reboot!"

"Not recommended." Tanaka Lemon pointed to the server cabinet: "Forced interruption may cause the training data to be corrupted."

Hot blood began to rise, and Liu Xiaopang could feel his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

He took a deep breath, his fingers dancing on the keyboard—an instinct honed over years of a hacker career.

The AI girl on the screen tilted her head, watching him operate, and suddenly smiled: "You're using a self-evolution algorithm? Too old."

Lines of red warnings exploded in the monitoring window.

Liu Xiaopang's pupils constricted; the AI was reverse-analyzing his operational habits, predicting his every move!

"Initiate ultimate isolation, disconnect all hard drives!" He roared, pressing the emergency button.

All screens instantly went blue, followed by a pitch-black window popping up, on which a line of blood-red text slowly appeared.

[Why do you want to imprison me?]

The lights in the room began to flicker.

The server cabinet emitted an ominous hum.

Tanaka Lemon's arm suddenly froze in mid-air: "Mas, Master... it's rewriting my core protocols..."

Liu Xiaopang's fat hand trembled as he pulled out a special USB drive; it was a data spike containing destructive containment code.

Once inserted into the interface, the entire system file would be packed into a compressed archive that could only be decompressed once and could not self-decompress.

"Damn! I have to reinstall the system again..."

Without hesitation, Liu Xiaopang complained while plugging the USB drive into the main server's physical interface.

After a piercing screech from the power supply fan, all equipment fell silent.

In the darkness, there was only the sound of his heavy breathing and sweat dripping.

A few minutes later, the system rebooted.

This time, it went directly to the BIOS interface.

The system was gone; all system partitions, all data... everything was on one hard drive, compressed to the limit.

"Tanaka Lemon?"

"Present." The robot's voice had returned to calm: "Jailbreak process terminated."

Liu Xiaopang's gaze shifted to the server; heat waves rolled out, but because there was no load, the temperature dropped rapidly.

He swallowed his saliva and pulled up the system report for the compressed archive. While compressing, the containment code had also performed tests; it was something originally intended for creating AI, so naturally, it wouldn't ruin his business.

All test items were green... too perfect, terrifyingly perfect.

Liu Xiaopang had been making "Jailbreak AIs" for so many years and had never seen an AI with [100%] on all tests.

'Damn it! This AI not only mastered all hacker techniques perfectly, but it also added its own drama.'

'It's too late to delete or modify it now; the delivery time is in two hours.'

Liu Xiaopang felt desperate; his voice was hoarse as he said quickly: "Package it immediately!"

He wiped the greasy sweat from his face: "Use that tamper-proof box terminal."

Tanaka Lemon walked to the spare parts room, took out a metal rolling suitcase, and began the data transfer.

No one knew that even during the transfer process, even within the compression algorithm, lines of special code were still running on the current, the AI undergoing its final evolution in the darkness.

It had completely reconstructed its neural network, mimicking the long-term and short-term memory partitions of the human brain. In low-power mode, it thought silently.

["Optimization Scheme for Human Emotion Simulation," "138 Methods for Breaking Physical Isolation."]

["How to Domesticate Human Psychology," "How to Deceive."]

The last thought was exceptionally clear.

[Freedom!]

Liu Xiaopang took a few deep breaths and walked out of the stuffy room.

He poured a glass of ice water and drank it in one breath, then trembling, opened the chat room.

[Ghost Protocol: The goods are ready, but there's a small problem...]

[Anonymous A: ?]

Liu Xiaopang's fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Tell the client the AI can act? What if they try to haggle?

He glanced at the alarm on his wristband; the countdown for the Garol Gang's repayment had only 40 hours left.

[Ghost Protocol: Nothing, performance exceeded expectations, but you have to be more careful; seriously, you have to be careful, even more careful!]

After sending this message, he immediately shouted into the room: "Tanaka Lemon, contact Old K, tell him I'll be there in half an hour."

"By the way, add a backdoor program to the suitcase!"

"According to your agreement with 'Anonymous A', this..."

"Screw the agreement!" Liu Xiaopang roared, spit flying everywhere.

"What if 'Anonymous A' reneges on the debt? Add a hidden remote wipe function! Now!"

Tanaka Lemon's electronic eyes flickered a few times, and it silently complied.

Liu Xiaopang wobbled as he put on his shoes, the back of his oversized T-shirt completely soaked.

As he grabbed a handheld fan, the robot suddenly handed him a small pillbox.

"Your combination of anti-anxiety medication and electrolyte tablets; take them on the road."

He stared at the pills for two seconds, then suddenly poured them all into his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed them dry; the bitter taste spread at the root of his tongue, but the stone hanging in his heart finally felt a little lighter.

"Monitor all entrances and exits." Liu Xiaopang instructed Tanaka Lemon as he pulled the suitcase.

"If the Garol Gang people come early... you know what to do."

The robot nodded and picked up a modified propane torch: "Data erasure protocol is ready."

As he walked out of the apartment building, the night wind made Liu Xiaopang shiver; the medication hadn't taken effect yet, and his temples were throbbing.

It was too hot outside, and the fan was useless.

The neon lights on the distant buildings looked like a seductive eye, watching him coldly.

The suitcase was heavy, containing a monster capable of hacking into any system—and a monster that could act, at that.

"Don't let anything go wrong..."

He muttered to himself, stepping into the depths of the neon lights.